The lead Foo dug deep into his personal history for the 50-minute speech. “The morning of January 14, 1969 there was a class of young doctors in a small delivery room in Warren, Ohio, there to witness their first live birth,” Grohl said. “As I was born, the room burst into applause. My first moments in this world: hanging upside down, covered in blood, screaming as I’m being spanked by a complete stranger. Perhaps the most appropriate preparation for becoming a working musician.”

“Just as we couldn’t imagine making the slightest ripple in the mainstream, no one else really imagined that happening either,” Grohl said. “Within a month, [Nevermind] was gold, by Christmas the record went platinum, by the new year we were selling 300,000 records a week.”

“I never really figured out why that happened,” he continued. “Timing? Perhaps. Legions of disaffected American youth fed up with Wilson Phillips? Probably.”

The Sound City creator also offered his feelings on In Utero producer/noted curmudgeon Steve Albini (“He’s a badass,”); named PSY’s “Gangnam Style” as one of his favorite songs of the past decade; took a shot at Pitchfork (“Paging Pitchfork… we need you to help us determine the value of a song. Who fucking cares?”); and impersonated Christina Aguilera.

All laughter subsided, though, when Grohl quit cracking jokes and began discussing Kurt Cobain’s tragic 1994 suicide. “When Kurt died, I was lost,” he said, before taking a long pause to gather himself. “I was numb. The music that I had devoted my life to had now betrayed me.”

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